Monday, November 21, 2016

Volo's Guide to Monsters - Dungeons & Dragons - Part 1

I am happy to be able to start sharing my contributions to Volo's Guide to Monsters, the newest gaming supplement to Dungeons & Dragons. Volo's is just the kind of project I like - Dungeons & Dragons, monsters, and getting to work with the most excellent art director, Kate Irwin. Kate assigned me some really awesome monsters and this was a really really fun assignment to work on. I produced a total of five illustrations for the book, I will be sharing three today and the last two on Wednesday. Enough yammering, here are my illustrations of the Lizardfolk, Beholder Gazer, and the Mind Flayer Tadpole...

Lizardfolk
11 x 14 - Digital
Art Director - Kate Irwin
© 2016 Wizards of the Coast LLC

I think the Lizardfolk was my favorite piece from the book. I have a soft spot for the D&D Lizardmen that goes back decades. I played a Lizardman back in 2nd Edition and after reading the section of Volo's Guide to Monsters that had the player character Lizardfolk I am ready to roll up a new one! Thrilled to have been able to create the illustration for this section of the book. I love to work on scaly lizard people.

Beholder Gazer
11 x 14 - Digital
Art Director - Kate Irwin
© 2016 Wizards of the Coast LLC
You can never go wrong with a Beholder of any kind. I was given a tiny little image of an old Gazer illustration and was told to flesh it out and make it cool. I can totally do that! There ended up being two version of the drawing for this one since the first one was found to be a little questionable when it came to the eye stalks. You can see both drawings below and I will go into more detail about this when I share the process and step later.
Mind Flayer Tadpole
9.1 x 10.1 - Digital
Art Director - Kate Irwin
© 2016 Wizards of the Coast LLC

Last but not least of these is the Mind Flayer Tadpole. This was the perfect opportunity for me to do a self portrait of myself in a D&D assignment. I have some fun photo reference to share for this one that involve me and a kneaded eraser on my face as a stand in for the tadpole.

Below are the drawings that went into these illustrations. Since I was working on five pieces and I didn't think I had the time needed to do these traditionally the painting are digital. It would have been nice to have paintings of all of these, but the final pieces did end up way better by me doing them digitally. At least there are the drawings, get them while you can, they are going fast...

Lizardfolk
11 x 14 - Pencil on paper
Art Director - Kate Irwin
Original - SOLD
© 2016 Wizards of the Coast LLC
Beholder Gazer (Final Version)
11 x 14 - Pencil on paper
Art Director - Kate Irwin
Original - SOLD
© 2016 Wizards of the Coast LLC
Beholder Gazer (Original Version)
11 x 14 - Pencil on paper
Art Director - Kate Irwin
Original - SOLD
© 2016 Wizards of the Coast LLC
Mind Flayer Tadpole
11 x 14 - Pencil on paper
Art Director - Kate Irwin
Original - SOLD
© 2016 Wizards of the Coast LLC

That is all for another exciting Monday on the blog, see you back here on Wednesday! Until then...

For more samples of my work or to contact me regarding my availability head over to my website: www.christopherburdett.com

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